


Roots and Lines, Roots and Lines

by RhineGold



Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: Ghosts, Grief, Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29714067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhineGold/pseuds/RhineGold
Summary: I am air.Once there was matter. Filthy, undeserving matter. The only comfort a face, a mask, an endless rotation of thoughts and patterns. Now there are only the currents of the winds and breezes, whipping around corners and guttering through streets.
Relationships: Dan Dreiberg & Rorschach
Kudos: 2





	Roots and Lines, Roots and Lines

I am air.

Once there was matter. Filthy, undeserving matter. The only comfort a face, a mask, an endless rotation of thoughts and patterns. Now there are only the currents of the winds and breezes, whipping around corners and guttering through streets. 

I should not be.

What lies beyond this state is a mystery, but it is one I have never spent much time contemplating. There should be an elsewhere, an other. I should be there and I am not. I am in the air now. I am in people's lungs and their bread and their thoughts. 

I see my thoughts disseminated.

The discussions are small, but they grow. Each day another person is convinced, another person sees the truth, I grow a little denser, a little stronger. Sometimes I imagine I am moving the scraps of paper that trail in my wake. Perhaps I am. After all, I am the wind. 

I do not go to see him. 

He is there, in the same little house, living the same little life. She left him in a swirl of baggage, fuming not with hatred but with stunted, broken love. He could not be the man she needed but perhaps no one truly can. They both know this. They kissed before she got into the cab. His tears stained the insides of his glasses, and I scattered, blown away by the rush of the vehicle and my own desire to escape. 

I have not been back. 

~*~

It starts small, as all things do. A sensation of being watched, an unexpected puff of air through the curtains on a windless day. Small, nearly unnoticeable. But he notices. He notices because each instance stirs something unidentifiable within him. 

He keeps the mask and the fedora in the basement. They had argued about it when there was still someone here to argue with. She claimed he clung to the past and maybe that was true. His gut is going soft again and his clothes are outdated and frumpy. He does not, as they say, get out much. It is too much to see the streets and know they are clean without their help. Without /his/ help. 

Sometimes he lifts the mask into his hands and watches the patterns swirl with the heat of his skin. He has never put it on. To do so seems like a violation, one he cannot bring himself to commit. So much of the man that was has been defiled, and he cannot bring himself to add to that crime, however small. 

It is a shrine, the way he keeps these things. Relics of an era gone past, remnants of a man who had always been so solid even at his most distant. She'd called it names, his devotion, in her moments of anger. She'd called it love. 

Dan Dreiberg puts down the mask and wanders back up to his empty kitchen. In his cupboards are several cans of beans, unopened. Likely, they never will be. At least not by him. 

~*~

Over time, the city heals itself. Wounds knit, buildings climb high and tall again. The pavements reform, rising and sealing and roiling along, creating paths and byways for foot traffic and vehicles to creep and ooze along. The wind whistles with all of this, singing and praising and steady.

I am still air. 

Sometimes I wonder if he knew this would happen. Supposedly he knows everything, so surely this must have been a possibility for him to consider. Energy, after all, cannot be created nor destroyed.

It merely changes form.

Have I changed? I still want what I have always fought for - justice. I still want to fight that which would damage, that which would take hold and root and cling and soil. There are things in this world that despoil that which is noble and good. Those are the things we fought against. In the end, I guess we succeeded in a sense.

The air whistles around the new bank that has just gone up, Adrien’s smiling face on the billboard marque. The world’s smartest man, with his hand in every pocket. Someone sees that smug face and believes a little more, thinks a little harder. The journal is out there and people can read. 

Today I move of my own volition, departing from the carrying breeze. I find myself moving towards a series of slowly decaying brownstones, towards the one place I know I should not.

I have nowhere else to go.

~*~

The breeze blows in, and for a moment, there is a brief shape against the curtains that makes Dan’s heart stop. And just as soon as he has glimpsed it, the silhouette is gone. He goes back to unpacking his groceries and tries not to think about the failures of his life.

~*~


End file.
